Khushi Bajpai
Published on: 28th July 2022 at 16:38 IST
A Bihar District judge told the Supreme Court that the Patna High Court had suspended him ostensibly for concluding trials quickly and asking for a promotion retroactive to when they were first started, despite the fact that there are currently over four crore cases pending in trial courts, making litigants clamour for prompt justice.
Senior attorney Vikas Singh, who appeared on behalf of District judge S K Rai, asked the Presiding Bench head by Chief Justice N V Ramana for an early listing of his petition because the district judge has ostensibly been placed on administrative leave because he concluded the trials for two POCSO cases in one day and four days, respectively, and imposed life sentences and death sentences. The petition is scheduled before the Court on Friday, the CJI agreed for the same.
It’s unclear from Rai’s appeal whether the HC suspended him for dispensing swift justice, as the senior counsel claimed before the CJI-led court. Rai spoke of the two POCSO cases in which he had rendered verdicts in a matter of days following concurrent trials, but his narration suggested a series of events beginning with the rejection of the first promotion in 2014.
In 2007, Rai joined Bihar Judicial Services as a junior civil judge after being selected in the top 7 out of 318 applicants. He was under consideration for promotion to civil judge (senior division) while holding that position in Jehanabad, but the HC, which reportedly looked at his verdicts and disposal rate, did not grant it. When he asked why he wasn’t being promoted, he was informed that his judgement writing was the issue.
The High Court responded in September of last year by notifying him that his representation had been rejected and requesting a justification for “why one of the minor penalties under Rule 11 of the Bihar Judicial Service (Classification, Control & Appeal) Rules, 2020 be not imposed on him for questioning the method used to evaluate judgments and raising an erroneous claim of personal bias and impartiality against the individual who had done so.”
